U.S. Senator
In 1937 he took his Senate seat, formerly held by the fallen Huey Long and slated for the Democratic nominee
Oscar Kelly Allen, Sr., of
Winnfield, the seat of Long's home parish of
Winn. Allen had won the Democratic nomination by a plurality exceeding 200,000 votes, but he died shortly thereafter. His passing enabled Ellender's election. The Democrats had so dominated state politics since the
disfranchisement of most blacks at the turn of the century, that the primary was the decisive election for offices. Ellender was one of twenty liberal Democratic senators in July 1937 who voted against killing the
Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which was introduced by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in an effort to
pack the United States Supreme Court following several anti-New Deal decisions from the Court. Ellender was repeatedly re-elected to the Senate and served until his death in 1972. He gained seniority and great influence. He was the leading sponsor of the federal free lunch program, which was enacted in 1945 and continues; it was a welfare program that helped poor students. In 1946, Ellender defended fellow Southern demagogue
Theodore Bilbo, who incited violence against blacks in his re-election campaign. When a petition was filed to the Senate, a committee chaired by Ellender investigated the voter suppression. Ellender defended the violent attacks on blacks trying to vote as the result of "tradition and custom" rather than Bilbo's incitements. The committee voted on party lines to clear Bilbo, with the three Democrats siding with the Mississippi
demagogue while the two conservative Republicans,
Bourke Hickenlooper of
Iowa and
Styles Bridges of
New Hampshire, dissented from the verdict. Bilbo, however, ultimately did not take his Senate seat due to medical issues and died a short time later. Ellender served as the powerful chairman of the
Senate Agriculture Committee from 1951 to 1953 and 1955 to 1971, through which capacity he was a strong defender of
sugar cane interests. He chaired the even more powerful
Senate Appropriations Committee from 1971 until his death. Denoting his seniority as a Democrat in the Senate, Ellender was
President pro tempore of the
U.S. Senate from 1971 to 1972, an honorific position. Ellender was an opponent of Republican Senator
Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin, who had achieved national prominence through a series of well-publicized speeches and investigations attacking supposed
communist infiltration in the US government, army and educational institutions during the 1950s. In March 1952, Ellender stated the possibility of the House of Representatives electing the president in that year's general election and added that the possibility could arise from the entry of Georgia Senator
Richard Russell, Jr. into the general election as a third-party candidate and thereby see neither President Truman or Republican Senator
Robert A. Taft able to secure enough votes from the Electoral College. Ellender strongly opposed the federal civil rights legislation, voting against the
Civil Rights Acts of 1957, the
Civil Rights Acts of 1960, the
Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and the
Civil Rights Acts of 1968 as well as the
24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ellender opposed the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce blacks' constitutional rights in voting. Many, particularly in the Deep South, had been
disfranchised since 1900. In the aftermath of the
Duck Hill lynchings, he also helped block a proposed anti-lynching bill which had previously been passed in the
House, proclaiming, "We shall at all cost preserve the white supremacy of America." On August 31, 1964, during President Johnson's signing of the
Food Stamp Act of 1964, the president noted Ellender as one of the members of Congress he wanted to compliment for playing "a role in the passage of this legislation". ==Last campaign, death, and aftermath==